Tuesday, June 28, 2011

So I uploaded all these photos, and I don't totally trust the "Save" function on blogger, but I have no time to write an actual 8-month update so I'm just going to post the photos for now and come back and edit tomorrow.

Friday, June 24, 2011

So I won't bore anyone with all the mid-way photos of the bathroom; I'll just skip to the good stuff. We're about 90% done with it now. R and I need to hang a mirror, buy and hang towel racks, a TP holder, change out the door hardware, and all that little stuff.

Oh and spend a billion dollars on a shower door. (For now we have a ghetto shower curtain, complete with wrapping paper ribbon holding it up to a tension rod. I refuse to spend one more stinking dollar on that shower than I have to so I wasn't going to be buying shower curtain rings or anything.) We're going to wait a month or two on the shower door, just because I can't bear to spend any more money on the room right now.

Our teeny-tiny bathroom:

Gonna put some glass shelves in that mosaic cut-out above the sink, for our toothbrushes and stuff. And add a mirror one of these days too. And that tangle of wires near the light switches has since been hooked up to our automatic floor-warmer. *grin*

Sink and vanity combo stolen 100% from Young House Love. I'm still not sure why theirs looks so much better than ours but I'm pretty happy with it. It's cleaner now too by the way.

And this is an earlier photo but the view out to our bedroom hasn't changed. Yeesh.

Yep. That's our bedroom.

Today is our contractor's last day, so things are starting to get a little cleaner. Keep your fingers crossed that he can finish putting up the last of the trim so R and I can get started cleaning and painting this weekend. We're SO ready to be back in our bed and have full access to our closets and drawers again. This whole process has taken eight weeks (although our contractor doesn't really work full days or weeks so he hasn't been here all day every day for those two months), and we're really sick of sleeping on the guest trundle beds and grabbing our clothes out of the laundry room every morning. But, I'm really happy with the bathroom and the way things turned out (despite the shower door issue and a replacing-a-few-broken-tiles-in-another-bathroom disaster that happened along the way).

Was it worth it? Give us a few weeks back in our bedroom and bathroom to fully decide. :)

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

How we've been killing the half hour between dinnertime and bedtime.... R and I get an adult beverage, we fill up the baby pool on the deck, Scrappy hunts bugs in the backyard, and when the mood strikes me, I grab my camera.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

First, the sticker shock. I hadn't really been worried about getting a door for our shower in the midst of all this bathroom remodel. I called a place awhile ago, and they said they'd come out for measurements after the walls were all set, so I put it on the back burner. And thought, "I just want two pieces of glass and some hinges, how much can it be?"

Wrong.

I got around to calling places yesterday for estimates. I want a frameless (the room is so small, any frame pieces are going to make it feel even smaller), pivot door with an in-line panel, and the opening is a little less than four feet across. I thought, "$200." Well, maybe that's a little low. "$500." Then I got three estimates, two from local glass shops and one from Lowes.

Here's a photo of our shower to look at while you scroll down.
Think how nice a frameless glass door would look on that!

$1500

*jaw drop*

I went to a store today to talk to someone in person, and yep, that's what we're looking at. Going with the cheapest hardware, and even installing it ourselves, we're only saving a fraction of that cost. The $500 range doors look incredibly cheap, plus they all have a bar right across the top - exactly what I don't want. I totally didn't budget for this, and I'm kind of stuck. I don't want to put something cheap in, but holy cow. I think for now I'm going to put up a shower rod and a curtain while I adjust to the price. Maybe in a few months (years?) I'll have the heart to shell out that money to finish the room.

On to swimming pools.

I bought a baby pool for Julia awhile ago, but we had a massive cicada infestation early this summer and only now did I feel safe bringing her out in our backyard for awhile. So I spent ten years this morning blowing up this stupid inflatable pool, but it looked pretty cool by the time I was done.

It looks so sad here, doesn't it?

Hooray! Ready to go! See how long it took me to blow up by comparing the sun line on the patio.

Filled it up with a margarita pitcher and the sink (yep, efficient is my middle name) and we were good to go! Julia seemed to like it alright, although she's a pretty tough crowd to please nowadays. If nothing else, it killed some time and made for cute photos! Unfortunately, she spent 99% of the time staring at her cups in the water and almost no time looking at the camera, but here's what I got.

"Argh. I'm Cup-Hand-Julia! Arghm arghm arghm."

And, just to let you guys know, this is what we were surrounded by:

Yep I'll make these photos extra-large for you.

Because we were surrounded by extra-large dead bugs. Catch that? LOTS AND LOTS OF EXTRA LARGE DEAD BUGS.

And finally, shoes! No Loubies, but baby shoes, which are almost as cute. Since Julia is a BABY, and she doesn't walk anywhere, and it's summer, I've been letting her go shoeless everywhere.

"What on earth are these things on my feet, Mom?"

"Must. Get. Them. Off."

"Hey Mom, I never wear 'em - how was I supposed to know they're not toys to bang together with my hands?"

But now she's itching to walk around wherever we go, and it's kind of embarrassing to have a baby walking around Starbucks or Home Depot in bare feet. And the shoes she does have now are either too big or really stiff, and I don't see how she's going to learn to walk in really stiff-soled shoes.

So off to Carter's we go in search of shoes. While I'm flabbergasted by their sizing (she's wearing 12-month clothing but the 3-6 month shoes fit her??), we picked up some white sandals that seem to be doing the trick. Obviously I don't have photos of her in Lowes or the glass shower door store, so you'll just have to imagine this cutie walking around in public in her cute little white shoes!

Now that I'm back in Good Mom territory, I'll go ahead and tell y'all that after we go walking around in public, she keeps pulling them off in the car and chewing on the soles.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Not too much happened today. Julia and I ran a few errands, supervised more bathroom work (including an emergency hole-in-the-wall to fix a leak) (photos to come soon), and walked all around the house a lot. She is just loving it when we let her hold on to our fingers and walk with her. Up and down the hallway, around and around the family room. She doesn't really get the concept of the walker-type toy, so for now, R and I are going to have to put up with the back issues, bending over to help her keep her balance.

She's also teething, I think, because it's been extraordinarily difficult to keep her happy lately. I have to keep reminding myself that she's not being annoying because she's just an annoying baby, but that something is bothering her. It's hard to keep that in mind because all I see is a baby that complains no matter what I do, but in reality, she's probably pretty uncomfortable. She's also been REALLY clingy to me lately. It's kind of cute how she tries to push out of Robert's arms into mine, but I could also use a break from her a little. And a break where I don't hear her crying in the other room because she's looking for me. Could be related to her teething, or just normal separation anxiety for her age. Either way, we're just going to have to ride it out.

Anyways, here's what we did today.

Looked in the mirror:

What's up Momma? Why you bothering my party?

No, seriously. Why you bothering my party?!

And "ate" dinner:

Some percentage of this had to go into her mouth, right?

It looks like such a good effort. Note the cookie in both eyebrows and the hair.

Right after this, she shoved that hand way into her ear to scratch it. Awesome. Thanks Baby.

Monday, June 13, 2011

It's been a pretty busy week, so I've been slacking in the blogging department. Oh well, I own it.

Julia and I went down to Dallas for a few days to visit my family. We had a full house since Aunt Lala was there too, and we had a really nice visit. Then, I snuck away to Richmond for a wedding Saturday night. All in all, a good time, but Julia and I were both exhausted by the time we made it back home Sunday night. I will never travel with a baby, a stroller, two checked bags, a suitcase-sized carry-on, and a diaper bag, all by myself ever again. R's connecting flight was delayed so it ended up being me and all the above, in the airport, trying to get to our car in a remote parking lot. Bleh is all I've got to say about that.

Anyways, we're home, and settled back in, and it feels goooood.

Here are the photos I took in Dallas. Julia LOVED swimming in my parents' pool. She splashed and bounced and licked the water like she was an old pro.